The number of the free online software solutions is raising constantly, so it is possible that we missed some. We want this list to be complete and up to date, so feel free to suggest other solutions and your experience using them in the comments and we will put it on the list after review.

Starting the innovation initiative and launching it in an organization is just a tip of the ice berg. What happens afterwards is the real challenge.

As momentum starts to fade, you have to ask yourself:

Have I reached enough people?

Were my efforts enough to sustain innovation as essential part of organizational culture?

Will people keep coming back to share little bit of themselves?

We will explore the possibilities of using known innovation elements as fabric to sustainable innovation management.

Familiar Story

You got the job to connect people with the innovation strategy you developed with the management.

Top management recognized the essential importance of the innovation management. They did it because they want to grow, or they are in danger. The reason is not important, it is important that the change is now alive and has support of the top level.

You set the goal, set the milestones and gathered the I-team.

The battle can begin.

Management winds in your back are pushing you forward, I-team is highly motivated to work as all they are hand picked to drive the initiative forward. You organized few workshop, got some people on board. You managed to collect some ideas, one or two got implemented.

You gave a SOW report, results report and you shake a hand of your employer and ride on to the Sunset towards next Challenge.

Two months later, you are called back to the company (if you are lucky). Initiative withered and died. You have to kick start it again, only now you lost the initial momentum… no one wants to be part of it. Support from I-team is diminished, Management is frustrated and wants a quick and painless fix, but you can’t deliver.

All odds are against you. You have only couple of months to deliver some results, only now, they must last.

How can you avoid this situation? What is long term solution that will bring high motivation, innovation culture and fertile ground for ideas to grow and flourish on the long run?

That puzzle are we going to tackle and complete in this article.

What is missing?

You had it right from the start. You had clear, achievable goals, motivated I-team and top management support. You organized workshops, got people interested, created some momentum and harvested some ideas. They were even implemented. But the structure you nourished can live only for so long. You made a child and left him to roam without support.

What you need is the software tool to act as your Brilliant assistant to bridge that gap and to sustain the initiative once you ride on.

Combining your skills with a software tool will result in a same effect as a Doctors operation: Major first intervention with occasional follow ups.

You probably know this already, but please keep on reading to see where is the value for you precisely.

Tool as a Brilliant Assistant

Our experience is that short term interventions are not working. Tools do.

With good tool you can create innovation friendly environment directly from your mind to online community. In the right hands it will support, sustain and maintain all innovation initiatives activities towards innovation goals.

Keep in mind one thing. Tools are there to support Innovation initiative, they cannot harvest innovation potential without people, their collaborative effort, coordination and monitoring.

This is where you as a consultant fit in perfectly.

Online tools will empower you to scale, to save time and to service more clients in the form of micro consulting.

You will achieve more clients and more meaningful and lasting business relationships. That is the main value of the assisting online tools.

How can online tool help you?

Transparency

Clear process, Clear roles, Clear goals and milestones are essential for any innovation initiative to succeed. If people do not understand what they are supposed to do in which step, and what should be the outcome of their actions they will fall out of the train on the first stop.

Tool: People can actually see the process visualized. They know how many phases there are, what is expected in which and what is final outcome. They know who participates, what is their contribution and they can compare it to the contribution of others.

Incentives

Everyone needs some incentive to keep doing something that is often regarded as “extra work” on the beginning.

They are different for all, but there is one general point to get people on board: When employees see that organization values their ideas on real problems, they will be more willing to engage in innovation going forward.

Tool provides large motivation possibilities to engage innovative people to act:

Alarming, notification system that calls everyone to action at the right moment.

Improvement of the employee position and image within the company itself

Influence with gaming aspect of the tool, as they come to raise their ranking, collect rewards and compete. Public recognition with Innovator of the month often raises participants sense of contribution.

Some come to the tool as it is set as a must in corporate policy.

Ability to resolve challenges as part of the Team.

Most valuable ones are those who see online tool as a way to affect ordinary way of working and whose only reward is actual transparent execution of their ideas.

Collaboration

Without collaborative effort which is often very hard to coordinate and sustain, innovation initiative is doomed. Nurturing employee collaboration and channeling it onto specific challenges is tiresome work, but necessary if you wish to harvest good ideas and to have enough to dig out the golden ones for implementation.

Without collaboration and knowledge exchange, ideation is just reduced to suggestion box, with no real community test.

Tools are often designed to compliment three essential aspects of the innovation management (3C’s): Collaboration, Communication and Coordination.

With ability to keep conversations in context of the idea for a long time, tools are very valuable lessons learned and knowledge archives. With intelligent notification system, feed and social elements IM tools are becoming social collaboration environments where all the right ingredients are mixed to gain hopefully very good results.

Support

Aligned with the innovation initiative goals. It must be clear to everyone involved what is at stake. Almost always, it is company’s future and survival. All should know that their activities are essential in order for company to survive and thrive.

Tools are there to help us implement our strategy. They are designed to sustain and compliment its meandric course with good flexibility options and usable simple to implement interventions. They are used as a centralized hub to collect the data, transform it to usable information and create new possibilities.

Tools are ideal for long term innovation management.

Time

If by corporate policy you managed to spare a few hours for employees personal projects, ideas and innovation it might not be enough. It will all crumble is you expect all their ideas will come on work. They are coming at any moment. When we are under pressure, under shower, on the road, on the beach…

Several hours a week are often not enough, even if employees used it well. We need to empower them to contribute from their beds, roadtrips, even showers.

Cloud technology and Online available tools can bridge that gap. Any time, from anywhere. Office walls are only a suggestion. Especially if we bring open innovation into mix.

Metrics

On the tool you can track various aspects of innovation performance, create reports and turn unorganized data into real usable information. To gain real time visual and metric insight into the results of the innovation initiative is something CEO’s are keen to have right now. Learning from your past mistakes, gives you power to raise from the necessary failures and turn them to opportunities on the next run.

Symbiosis needed – Consulting with Technology

Short term interventions are not enough. Why put all that hard work in creating excellent innovation strategy, when it will crumble after you leave office behind.

Combining consultants expertise with technology, we gain the possibility to affect organizations on a level never seen before with the same resources as you have now.

Hello InnoWorld!

Welcome to the genesis of Innovation Post blog!

After some thought the need for writing became so ripe in me that I had to start this blog, blog only dedicated to the Innovation.
I hope that you, as my respected visitor, will find Innovation Post as a place where you can grow your knowledge base and get a different perspective about innovation.
This blog is all about Innovation and its satellites, and is in full service to You, my reader.
So please sit down and make yourself comfortable as i prepare and present to you the hottest trends and topics on innovation today served with humor as well as facts.
Let us grow together in sharing of knowledge.